Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) (23 page)

“
Again
,” Toni said. “He might try to hurt you
again
. And he’s come after us.”

“Right. And that’s fucked up. Why should I have to run off and hide because of him? What gives him the right to make me have to leave a good job and turn my life upside down? He’s the one who’s done something wrong—not me.”

“He may have the ability, but he doesn’t have the right,” I said. “You can choose to either play his game, which is what you’re doing now, or you can fight back and tell the DA you’ll testify against him. That way, we can bust him when we find him.”

“If you’re worried about retaliation,” Toni said, “at least you won’t be alone. Yesterday, we went with the police to the house across from the cemetery to try and talk to Eddie Salazar. This time Salazar wasn’t there, but Martinez was. He ended up getting arrested for drug charges. He said he was going to rape me while he made Danny watch. Then he said he was going to kill us both. So naturally, Captain America here slapped him and broke his nose again. Then he gave him our business card and told him he couldn’t wait to meet him when he got out of prison.”

“I didn’t think you heard that,” I said.

“Yep.” She was stone-faced. “Heard the whole thing.”

I stared at her, looking for a clue as to what she was thinking. “You liked it,” I said to Toni. I was fishing, but what the hell. May as well guess optimistic.

“I did,” she answered, suddenly smiling. “I was so proud.” Her tone was that of a mom who’s ne’er-do-well kid suddenly brought home an A on a report card. Better than I was expecting, actually.

“Really?” Kara said, laughing. A few seconds went past, then she said, “I’ve changed my mind. I already had, but now I really have. You guys inspire me. I want to testify against Salazar. I don’t want him to do what he did, and then just think he can run around scot-free, intimidating people. That’s bullshit. I want to fight back, like you guys do.”

“Fantastic,” I said. “That’s the only way to stop assholes like this. The DA said he could get a warrant if you’d testify. I’ll set up a conference call and call you back with a time. It’s going to take a bit, though. They’ll arrange to take your statement over the phone, and they’ll figure out a way to get the necessary signatures from you. We’ll have them call you, if that’s okay.”

“Okay,” Kara said. “Just one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You guys have to promise to look out for Nicky and me if we testify.”

“No problem,” Toni said. “We’re all in the same boat. We can all look out for each other.”

“One other thing, Kara,” I said.

“What?”

“Until we find him and arrest him, you guys just keep doing what you’re doing. Stay where you are, and stay out of sight.”

~~~~

Excellent morning! I called Dwayne and let him know what had happened. He patched Harold Ohlmer in. An hour later, Harold took Kara’s statement over the phone. Kara authorized Toni to release the photos Toni’d taken of Kara’s injuries last Friday to the police. Harold took the photos and Kara’s testimony and procured a warrant for the arrest of Eduardo Salazar an hour later.

Toni and I were in a good mood when we relieved Doc and Kenny at noon.

“Lots of traffic,” Joaquin said, “but no silver Mercedes.”

I looked at the log and saw that they’d recorded eleven separate cars coming and going from the home in four hours.

“Looks like a drug house,” I commented. “But we searched it yesterday. There aren’t any drugs there.”

“At least there weren’t after we left yesterday,” Toni said.

“Maybe they moved some in last night after we were done. They might have thought that once we’d searched the house, it wouldn’t get searched again, at least not for awhile.” I set the logs down. “Good job, guys,” I said. “Were you bored?”

“I noticed you didn’t assign yourself to sit with this little peckerwood for four hours straight,” Doc said, nodding to Kenny. “I had to listen to him brag about his girlfriends the whole damn time.”

I laughed. “Girlfriends? Is that what he calls those jailbait teenagers he hangs with?” Doc laughed.

“They’re all legal!” Kenny protested. “They’re young, but not children.”

“Are any of them even out of middle school yet?” Toni asked.

“Aw, that’s bullshit!” Kenny said. “They’re young women—all nineteen or twenty years old.”

“But still in middle school, right?” Doc said. “No honor students in the bunch.”

“Fuck you, Doc,” Kenny said.

“Okay, you guys,” I said, smiling. “You’re relieved. See you back here at four.”

They said their good-byes and left in my car, still jabbering at each other as they left.

“Well, Ms. Blair,” I said, taking one of the two swivel chairs and leaning back, watching the video monitor, “are you ready to settle in for an exciting four hours?”

“Sure,” she said. She pointed to the refrigerator. “Flip you to see who makes lunch.”

~~~~

Part of our agreement with SPD was that together, we’d only be able to watch the house for sixteen hours per day. Today, there would be no surveillance of the house from midnight to 0800. This left a hole, but even SPD didn’t have the manpower to spare for a round-the-clock stakeout in connection with a simple assault beef. Logan PI sure as hell didn’t. Toni and I took the 1200 to 1600 shift, Doc and Kenny came back for the 1600 to 2000, and then Toni and I finished up with the 2000 to 0000 shift. The logs showed that the last car to visit the house left at 2113. Nothing particularly noteworthy all day. Did I mention that surveillance work can be monotonous?

Doc picked us up a few minutes before midnight. Normally, we wouldn’t use the same stakeout vehicle two days in a row so as to avoid suspicion. The same plumber’s van in the same position day after day will most likely attract attention. One of the beauties of the Winnebago, however, is that it’s not necessarily suspicious to see a motor home parked for a few days in the same spot. In fact, that’s what they do. They’re
supposed
to be parked for a few days. The bigger issue for the motor home was crew transfer, but we dealt with that by parking down the block a bit and always parking so we can exit on the side opposite of our subject. Our risk of being noticed was relatively low.

Unfortunately, though, the traffic at the home had been nonrevealing on the first day of the stakeout. Certainly, there’d been no silver Mercedes.

Our plan was to leave the Winnebago in place for three days. SPD was to provide coverage on Tuesday, August 23—day two of the stakeout. Kenny met them at eight the next morning and gave them a briefing on how to use the different R/V systems. Sixteen hours later, they’d had the exact same result as us. Numerous comings and goings throughout the day. Some, even, were the same vehicles from the day before. But none were suspicious, and none involved Eddie Salazar’s silver Mercedes.

Two days. Two strikes.

~~~~

In my unit in the army, only the officers were initially issued sidearms. Grunts like me were issued M4 rifles. The M4—sort of a mini-version of the Vietnam-era M16—is a reasonably good weapon: light, handy, and mobile. The brass expected them to be enough. As the war progressed, however, we learned the hard way that with the amount of close-quarter work that we did in and around buildings, lives could be saved by allowing the infantry to carry sidearms. Unfortunately, even after they figured this out, the brass didn’t help us much when they issued us Beretta M9s. The gun was okay I suppose, except for the unfortunate fact that it fires a 9 mm bullet. We soon came to realize that your average hyped-up insurgent required three or four such 9 mm bullets to become incapacitated. And while you were busy trying to fill him up with the minimum number of 9 mm slugs, he was busy trying to take you out you using a gun firing a much more lethal round—usually an AK. The joke in our unit was that it was faster and safer to take out an insurgent by throwing the M9 at him and hitting him in the head as opposed to pumping him full of the requisite number of 9 mm pinpricks. After several such thrilling encounters, we didn’t even bother with the Berettas; we made do with our M4s.

We were not allowed to solve this problem by carrying private weapons, under threat of severe penalty. But we eventually found something of a loophole when we discovered we were allowed to carry any officially issued weapon—not just the Beretta. Turns out the SOCOM guys were still being issued the good old Colt Model 1911A .45-caliber semi-automatic handguns. The most accurate handgun ever made with the most lethal round, the M1911A fires large-caliber bullets nearly a half inch in diameter. One hit from a “flying-pumpkin,” and the bad guy was no longer a threat. We got hold of the 1911s. We loved them. We learned how to take care of them. We became inseparable.

~~~~

At seven o’clock the next morning, I was in the kitchen getting ready to go to work. This means something a little different to someone in my business because I still carry a Model 1911 nearly every day. The good news is that civilian life is not as dangerous as my time overseas was. The bad news is that in my job I still occasionally bump into bad guys that are every bit as dangerous as an Arab insurgent. Thus, the need to “gun up.” In fact, I often carry a little backup strapped to my ankle. I treat guns with respect, and part of that means I follow a careful routine in caring for them.

This morning, like every other morning, I visually inspected my Les Baer Thunder Ranch Model 1911, .45 caliber. I released the magazine, thumbed off the safety, ejected the round in the chamber and locked the slide open. I confirmed that the gun was unloaded. Next, I exercised the magazine spring by thumbing out all eight cartridges, then reloading them. I did this to my two backup magazines as well. Satisfied that all appeared as it should, I replaced the magazine, released the slide, and thumbed the safety on. The gun was ready for action in “condition one”—cocked and locked. I put the gun into the Bianchi holster on my hip. Now I was ready.

At precisely that moment, the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. Dwayne. Good timing.

“Good morning,” he said, cheerfully. “You up and at ’em yet? Ready to take on the new day?”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s our turn to man the Winnebago. I have to drive Doc and Kenny out there. I was just getting ready to walk out the door.”

“I think I’ve got someplace you might rather be,” he said.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” I said. “There are lots of places I’d rather be. What did you have in mind?”

“Camelot Arms Apartments,” he said. “Beacon Avenue near the Jefferson Community Center.”

That stopped me. “Actually wasn’t thinking of that,” I admitted. “Why do I want to be at the Camelot Arms Apartments?” I was suddenly curious.

“Because our good friend Javier got a phone call from a friend of his who knew we were looking. Someone saw Eddie Salazar park his silver Mercedes outside one of the apartments there and go on in. There was a pretty, dark-haired woman with him.”

My adrenalin level started to climb. “No shit,” I said. “When?”

“Last night, about eight o’clock. The car’s still there—we’ve got the car and the apartment under surveillance. I’m assembling an assault team right now. We’re going in at 8:15 or so to arrest Eddie Salazar. Figured you might want to be there—you know, watch the real police in action.”

“You figured right,” I said. “That’d be a treat. I appreciate that. Got a time and place for the rally point?”

“We’re going to assemble in the Jefferson Park parking lot on the south side of the community center right on Beacon Avenue at 0745.”

“I know where it is,” I said. “I’ll be there—wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’ll swing past the office and grab Toni. Then we’ll head on over.”

~~~~

Fifteen minutes later, Toni met me in the Logan PI parking lot and we took off. The Wednesday morning traffic wasn’t as bad as it would become in another hour, but it was already starting to build.

“Maybe this is it,” Toni said.

“Maybe,” I answered. “I sure hope so. Hopefully, it’s Gina with him and not someone else. I sure hope she’s okay.”

“They got no ID on the woman?” Toni asked.

“No, none that I heard. Just a ‘dark-haired woman.’”

Toni thought for a second. “Well,” she said, “even if it’s not her, at least we’ll still have him.”

“True. I can’t wait to get this guy in an interrogation room.”

“My guess is he won’t have anything to say,” Toni said.

“Could be. But at least he won’t be hunting for Gina anymore.”

“True enough.”

Except for the stereo, which was playing “Demons and Lakes” by Ravenna Woods, we drove the rest of the way in silence. We pulled into the north parking lot at the Jefferson Community Center on Beacon Avenue at 7:40 a.m.

Chapter 14

THE JEFFERSON PARK
Community Center, our rally point, is about three blocks south of the Camelot Arms Apartments, right at the on top of Beacon Hill in Seattle, just east of I-5. Technically, Beacon Hill isn’t a hill at all—it’s a ridge. But when Boston native Harwood Young decided to name the area in 1889, he named it after his hometown landmark Beacon Hill. The name stuck.

Today, people—mostly joggers and dog walkers—were already active in the park, even at this early hour. They slowed or even stopped to watch the assembly of heavily armed police officers that had gathered for the bust. Two uniformed officers kept them well away from the assembly area.

Toni and I were waved through—apparently Dwayne had briefed the officers regarding my Jeep. I parked, and we hopped out. We donned our vests and joined the small crowd of police officers. At 7:45 Dwayne called everyone to order.

“Okay, everyone listen up!” he called out. The police officers stopped talking and turned to pay attention. Dwayne stood before an artist-easel-type tripod to which was attached a flip-over pad. A portable blackboard was situated alongside.

“We’ve been informed that last night at eight o’clock, this man,” Dwayne said as he pinned a copy of Eddie’s picture to the blackboard, “name of Eduardo ‘Eddie’ Salazar, parked his silver Mercedes at the Camelot Arms Apartments complex and entered unit 109. An unidentified dark-haired woman—no other information on her—accompanied him. It’s possible she might be none other than Gina Fiore. The tip came to us this morning at 6:34 a.m. We placed the apartment unit, and the car under surveillance at 7:20. The car is still there, and there’s been no activity at the apartment since we’ve been watching.”